This session is by one of the best all-round cyclists in the world, MVDP. It illustrates that basic sessions, like a simple long-duration ride, are still the bedrock of good endurance training, even among highly trained and talented athletes.
This workout is an MTB ride of ~5H in duration, in this case performed off-road by Van Der Poel in June 2022, but which can certainly be ridden on or off-road.
By riding for long durations at a lower intensity, this session works on foundational aerobic fitness and fatigue resistance really well.
In particular, long low-intensity rides like this can help to:
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Increase endurance/fatigue resistance, primarily through improving fat oxidation ability, and resistance to muscle damage and central nervous system fatigue.
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Develop threshold power or FTP, through improving the aerobic capacity of the muscles, improving lactate shuttling and developing fat oxidation.
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Develop VO2max, though improving the aerobic capacity of the muscles, and increasing the oxygen carrying capacity of the blood, and the amount of blood the heart can pump per beat (stroke volume).
As many of these training adaptations are accrued in response to training volume rather than intensity, this ride allows for a high duration of riding and strong adaptive stimulus, without inducing too much overall muscle damage or stress.
Overall, low-intensity rides like these are crucially important to supporting higher-intensity fitness by providing a strong aerobic base upon which to build. They should be the bedrock of your training, pretty much year-round (albeit with shorter rides and less overall volume at certain points in the year).
You will find that these sessions start off easy and get progressively tougher as you tick off the hours. The slow twitch fibres will gradually become more fatigued and glycogen stores will start to run low towards the end of a very long ride.
This ride is a little less controlled in terms of power than Egan Bernal’s endurance ride described above. Good power control in endurance rides can typically give you the biggest bang for your buck in terms of time investment (minimising time spent coasting, and avoiding high power surges that can cause unnecessary fatigue and disrupt the energy systems we’re looking to develop). However, less structured endurance rides are also a very important part of a balanced training plan, as they allow a mental break from structured riding and, in this case, an opportunity to work on MTB-specific skills and fitness. Unstructured rides can also be used as an opportunity to do some social riding.
Nevertheless, we can see that Van Der Poel has certainly controlled his power where the terrain allows, aiming to keep within a Zone 2 range.
Ondrej Cink’s Over-Unders Workout:
Check out the workout file here: